Lonzo Ball on FBI probe: ‘If eveyone’s getting paid anyway, we might as well make it legal’

The continuing saga of whether collegiate athletes should be legally paid is at the forefront of the college sports world
again with the ongoing FBI investigation into potential violations among many of the top teams in college basketball world.

While UCLA is not one of the teams implicated in the
Yahoo Sports report from Pat Forde published Friday, one of the most popular Bruins in recent memory has weighed in on the story. Lonzo Ball, who was a star
guard for UCLA in 2016-17 made a statement shared by many people as to the issue of college athletes being paid, as tweeted
by Bill Oram of the SoCal News Group:

Lonzo Ball on today’s Yahoo! report: “Everybody knows everybody’s getting paid. That’s how it is. If everybody’s getting paid
anyway might as well make it legal.”

Dozens of current and former college basketball players were named in Friday’s report, including Duke’s Wendell Carter, Michigan
State’s Miles Bridges, and Alabama’s Collin Sexton as well as former players like Washington’s Markelle Fultz, who went one
spot ahead of Ball in last June’s NBA Draft, as having received some form of improper benefits that would constitute an NCAA
violation, whether it be structured loan payments. Ball’s current Lakers’ teammate Kyle Kuzma, a star at Utah, was also implicated.

There is no doubt that the breadth and depth of the possible violations will be revealed in recent weeks and months, but what
action the NCAA will take against offending teams and players still remains unknown.

However, Ball’s statements today will once again re-ignite the debate on whether athletes who generate billions of dollars
in revenue for schools all across the country should be somehow compensated for their contributions in generating that revenue.

One thing that is for certain, as
SEC Country’s Connor Riley points out, is that it’s an issue that will not be fixed soon, if ever.